See, at least one company gets it

[Zeus]

Capcom prices Dead Rising downloadable prequel for $5 and it sells 300k in its first week

http://www.1up.com/news/dead-rising-2-case-sells

Only special games (or heavily-hyped ones) can be more than $10 if digital download only. Price it at $5 and you make a decent-looking game that would otherwise be an afterthought into a very attractable offer. I imagine if a wonderful title like Winterbottom was priced at $5 off the bat it would have sold excessively more than it did.

[Shrinweck]

They are learning. It's still a relatively brand new industry idea.

[Don]

Assuming that distribution costs nothing or at least has no fixed upfront cost per game, then the game would only need to sell 30K copies if it was $50. Could it sell 30K for $50? You can't possibly know stuff like that since that'd require rewinding time, but it sure does not seem implausible. After all Megaman 9 & 10 went for more than $5 a piece..

[Zeus]

Assuming that distribution costs nothing or at least has no fixed upfront cost per game, then the game would only need to sell 30K copies if it was $50. Could it sell 30K for $50? You can't possibly know stuff like that since that'd require rewinding time, but it sure does not seem implausible. After all Megaman 9 & 10 went for more than $5 a piece..

This is why you have all these companies experimenting with the pricing structure. And the results up to this point are showing something similar to the retail market where only certain, "special" games sell at "full" price ($50 US/ $60 Cdn for Wii, and $60/$70 for 360 or PS3) while everything else gets minimal sales (Alan Wake is a perfect example). You get some titles that are priced at a lower price point and succeed immensely, Katamari Damacy 1 being the prime example. The $15 price point is now the "full" price for digital distribution and when companies sell for $10 or $5, they're finding that a lot more people are willing to try.